Soccer In 2012

2012 Predictions: What Will Happen To Soccer?

If you couple Qatar’s wealth with a city of 11 million people that has only one decent team, the potential is unmatched. PSG can go all the way to Europe’s top. Look for established stars in their prime to land in Paris in 2012.In England, a “Big Two” of Manchester City and Manchester United is starting to emerge. Arsenal is a long way behind and heavily dependent on an improbable streak of goals from Robin van Persie that on simple statistical grounds is unlikely to continue. As Chelsea’s aging team splits up — with Nicolas Anelka, Didier Drogba and quite likely Frank Lampard leaving in 2012 — the club’s owner Roman Abramovich would need to spend fortunes to maintain standards. It’s unclear whether Abramovich still has the appetite. Ferguson, who turns 70 on the last day of 2011, still does. However, City appears to have snatched the English summit with a youngish team that still has years in it. The City-United FA Cup match up on January 8th, 2012, should provide an early sign of whether City’s 1-6 victory at Old Trafford last October was a fluke or an omen.Rising stars will continue to flock to the Premier League. Prime candidates beyond Götze and Hazard include Palermo’s 23-year-old Slovenian playmaker Josip Ilicic (a name to remember) and two youngsters who are already regular Dutch internationals: the defensive midfielder Kevin Strootman of PSV Eindhoven and Gregory van der Wiel of Ajax. Yet the hottest youngster may not come to Europe at all. Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior, the 19-year-old Brazilian striker who Pele praises as “more complete” than Messi and potentially better than Pele himself, has just renewed his contract at Pele’s old club, Santos. Real Madrid, Chelsea and probably everyone else would still love to sign him. If Neymar really does stay home, it would be a mark of the growing wealth of the Brazilian league. Perhaps in 2012, the first European star will move to Brazil. Major League Soccer, too, looks set to continue its long-term growth in spectators and financial clout as ever more Americans and Canadians switch on to the sport. Montreal Impact is due to become the MLS’s 19th franchise in 2012.Let’s hope it’s a year of growth alone. But the great looming threat to soccer is match-fixing. This probably already riddles most leagues around the world, including Italy’s Serie A and almost every league east of Germany. Even Spanish soccer has been touched. The one thing that can turn people off soccer is the suspicion that it’s rigged. So far, the Premier League appears to have resisted the virus, but expect an English match-fixing scandal to break around a vulnerable player — perhaps someone with gambling debts of his own — some time in 2012. If match-fixing does take off, then the rest of the merry circus loses its meaning.